


Ar Haner Nos yn Glir y Daeth (Upon the Midnight Clear)

by lost_spook



Category: Y Gwyll | Hinterland
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, References to Welsh Mythology, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2739506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A seemingly open and shut case results in Mathias and Mared hanging about the castle ruins late one night - and they find they're not alone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ar Haner Nos yn Glir y Daeth (Upon the Midnight Clear)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariadnes_string](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/gifts).



> With many thanks to my beta, Llywela13, who not only checked the fic over, but provided me with the sentence or two of Welsh used here. (Had it been left to me, Google translate, and an antiquated Welsh dictionary, this would not have been possible. Or at least, probably hopelessly incorrect.)
> 
> I should note that this was written from having watched the BBC4 version rather than the BBC Cymru, because (as I understand it), there's a difference between the two that would render one of the plot details below incorrect.

Tom Mathias crouches down beside the body of a young man: a student, lying there sodden, pale and unquestionably deceased on the uneven sand and pebbles of the beach. From what he’s been told, it sounds like an accident – a group of students out for the last time before going home for Christmas, and what starts at Rummers and finishes at Pier Pressure, winds up on the seabed. The rough waves that eat away at the town and sweep over the edge of the Prom on a bad night have been the end of unwary drinkers before now. Chances are that this one won’t be the last.

“Aidan Michaels,” says Siân. “Third year, staying up at Pentre Jane Morgan. Taking Geography.”

Mared looks upward at the grey sky. She doesn’t say _students_ , but it’s there in her stance, before she glances down again at the body and then relents, crouching down beside Matthias. “No mystery here, then. Waste of our time, surely.”

“Why wasn’t he with the others?” asks Mathias. “The rest of the group. When did he leave them – why?”

Siân shrugs. It’s cold out here, and they’ve other things to be doing. And it’s a student; he can see them both thinking it. No need to explain drunken students, is there? “Heading back up top? Kicking the bar?”

Mathias looks back up, baffled by the last. “What?”

“Student thing,” says Mared. “Metal bar at the end of the Prom. It’s a tradition. For luck or something.”

Mathias returns his attention to the former student. _Couldn’t have been that, then,_ he thinks. _Or if it was, the luck didn’t take._

 

The Student Village – Pentre Jane Morgan – lies up at the top of Penglais Hill, just past the main University Campus, which sits on a shelf looking over the town in harsh concrete grandeur. The student village is newer, the small houses made of kinder, if more nondescript Nineties designs. Mathias thinks they look pretty much identical and wonders how many students wind up at the wrong house on the way home on a weekend.

Number thirty’s his goal, and once he sorts the back-to-front way the houses are ordered and arrives on the right doorstep, he’s let in by a housemate of Aidan’s, Katy Jones.

 

Katy’s nervous, keeps fiddling with the edges of her sleeves, and when he asks what happened to Aidan, she shrugs. “We don’t know,” she says. “He left us. Went to the Inn on the Pier instead and got plastered. It was after the castle –” She stops, as if she’d rather not have said the last.

“The castle?” prompts Matthias, wondering if it’s yet another pub, one that he hasn’t registered yet, or if she means the ruined castle down on the sea front.

She shakes her head and won’t say any more, except that it doesn’t matter, that what happened after was definitely an accident, they all know that. But she looks away, as if she’s not convinced.

“Katy?” He tries one last time.

She shrugs. “I thought I saw it, too. The ghost. When I looked back. But I couldn’t have, right? Aidy must have had a torch or something, or it was a car light. That’s all. And it couldn’t have been anything dodgy. Aidy wasn’t like that.”

 

Back down in the town, Matthias rejoins Mared, who’s found another friend of Aidan’s who was on the fatal night out, this one living in one of those Victorian three-storey terraced houses that Aber has in plenty. Useful for seaside boarding houses back in the day, and ubiquitous now as run-down student accommodation. This one has a bike in the hallway and a smell of damp lurking about it.

“It was a dare,” the friend says, with a shrug. “Stupid thing. I didn’t go with them – said I’d meet them at the Pier.”

“Dare?” says Mared.

“End of term,” says the student. “Joel dared Aidan to go up to the castle, see the ghost.”

Mared raises an eyebrow. “What ghost?”

“Exactly,” says the student. “It’s all crap, all that stuff. Made up to scare Freshers – and pillocks like Aidy. And then he went and got pissed, didn’t he? That’s all. Bloody idiot.” He wipes a hand across his face at sudden tears, and then looks embarrassed. “What d’you want to know for, anyway?”

Matthias stands up. “Just doing our job.”

 

“Look, it was an accident,” says Mared. “Clear as day, isn’t it. Or are you going to go ghost-hunting round the castle in the dead of night?”

It isn’t exactly how Tom puts it; he says that he might as well go along later on to make sure. He’s not expecting spirits, obviously, but there could be something else going on in the ruins. It’s not as if Mared needs to come.

 

Except she does. 10.45 pm on a Saturday night, her teeth chattering with the cold, and annoyed, but she’s there.

“Might as well check,” Mathias says, and glances at her again. “You can go back if you like. Probably nothing.”

Mared gives him a look. “Just when nobody shows by midnight, we leave, yes? Agreed?”

He nods. He’s just got that feeling there’s something else going on – Aidan separating from the rest, Katy’s nerves, the odd talk of a ghost. There’s something more than the elements and alcohol in it, he thinks. It’s not as if there couldn’t have been something untoward going on here. The only remnant of the castle worth talking about is little more than an archway, but the area’s set back from the front and it’d afford at least some cover to someone wanting to make a deal out of sight – or whatever it was. 

“If a ghost does show up,” says Mared, following Mathias up past the church and into what little is left of Aberystwyth’s castle, “do we arrest it?”

That gets a brief smile out of him. “Innocent until proven guilty, right? It’d only be helping us with our enquiries.”

“Silly me.”

“And,” adds Matthias, “I don’t need babysitting.”

Mared won’t give a reaction. “Protocol, sir. Two officers at any time when investigating the paranormal.”

 

It’s gone twelve by Mared’s watch, which she’s pointed out, but Mathias doesn’t move, not yet. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for. He can’t say it’s so much based on careful observation this time, as just a feeling in the air. The castle’s too well-kept, too open to be eerie, you’d think, except, like most things, not so much in the dark. On a cold, clear midnight not far off Christmas, hiding in the one remaining section of it, there’s suddenly something unnerving about the place. 

“Ten past,” says Mared. 

“You go.”

She does. He can hear her muttering something in Welsh as she tramps back down the path, away from him.

And that’s when he sees it, suddenly there opposite him in the cramped stone space. What it is he’s seeing, though, Mathias isn’t sure. It wavers when he looks at it, as if it’s not quite there, and the temperature’s rapidly dropping; it’s bloody freezing now, even for December in Aber. He presses himself back at the wall in shock, unable to move.

It says something. Its voice is faint, as if coming from a long way away, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck rise. He can’t make out the words, and then he does, but it’s speaking Welsh. He tries to reply anyway: “What do you want?” 

His voice sounds too loud, too ordinary in his ears – wrong somehow, in comparison to the uncanny voice of the ghost. He hears some words – Saesneg, and something else after it that probably isn’t complimentary. He closes his eyes, knowing the sensible course would be to run, but terror transfixes him. If this is what panicked Aidan and caused the tragedy, he can’t blame him. It’s like all the ghost stories: he can feel an unnatural chill creeping into his bones, except then he sees visions of the waves, of drowning beneath them, so clear he can hardly breathe. It’d be a cold night for it. 

God, he thinks, the ancient stones pressing into his back, he’s finally cracked up, just like everyone said. And between that and being cursed by some unhallowed wraith, he doesn’t know which is worse.

“What the –?” It’s Mared, who’s come back, interrupting the moment of frozen fear. “My god, what is it?” 

Mathias opens his eyes again, as she cuts her own question short, thumping back against the wall beside him in disbelief, her gloved hand gripping his arm tightly. She can see it, too, and he’s ridiculously relieved. It might be the symbol of some impending doom, but at least he’s not hallucinating. 

The ghost shifts slightly, as a sheet might in the wind, and says something else in its far-away, hollow voice.

Mathias leans towards Mared. “What’s it saying?” He still can’t quite shake off the cold, or the fear or the thought of the waves, waiting so close.

“What?” She’s still staring at it, not really taking in his question. Then she lifts her head, a rebellious set to her mouth, glaring at the thing as she shouts back at it in Welsh. “Gad i ni fod! Cer o ‘ma’r diawl!”

For one moment, everything seems to waver, as if they’re looking at everything from underwater. Mathias imagines he hears the sound of a horn and hounds baying somewhere, and then it vanishes, and with it the spectre.

It takes a while to feel sure it’s gone, and for the fear to fade, to be able to detach themselves from each other, but after a small eternity that’s probably only a few minutes, they can breathe out again and move away. As they walk back towards the sea front, things that can’t be said settle into the silence between them, like snow.

“What did you say?” Tom asks eventually.

She shrugs. “I told it to get lost, that’s all.”

“And it went, just like that?” Then Mathias thinks about it some more, and supposes that it makes as much sense as anything. He can’t speak Welsh, and neither could the student, Aidan Michaels, and maybe that’s what the ghost wanted. If the whole thing wasn’t some trick, he’s lucky she came back, isn’t he? “Because it was in Welsh.”

Then Mared looks at him, hard. She’s more sceptical. “So,” she says, “what, is Welsh the language of hell now, as well as heaven?”

“Same thing, maybe?” Mathias says. “Annwn, Annwfn.”

Mared walks on. “Fairy tales,” she says, firmly. “That didn’t happen. We don’t mention this. Sir?”

“All the available evidence indicates it was an accident.” He almost smiles. He doesn’t want to talk about it again, either.

She breathes out; her breath visible in the air. “Good. Because I’m not coming with you to Annwfn to ask Gwyn ap Nudd why he’s not doing his bloody job properly these days.”

“Right.”

“Yeah,” says Mared, putting her hands in her pockets and setting her head for home. “Students, eh?”

The town’s always that bit emptier and eerier when they’re not around, though, it has to be said. Most of them have gone now for the holidays, and you can feel the difference. It’s a clear, frosty midnight, and it’s too quiet after that shock, but as they walk back past the church and head towards the Prom, they can hear echoes of a carol from everywhere and nowhere, as if blown in from the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> The translation of what Mared says to the ghost is basically: "'Leave us alone! Get out of here, devil!" (The title is the Welsh translation of "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear".)


End file.
